RICHMOND: Two dollar mania

The Japanese are inventors of wonderful things – ramen noodles, compact cars, and the Wii. I’d add The Daiso to that list. It’s Japan’s biggest 100-yen franchise. But unlike dollar stores here, most of Daiso’s products are very high-quality.

Daiso’s first North American store is in Richmond, B.C. It’s mere minutes from the airport and worth the half-hour (or so) drive in from Vancouver. Some time in traffic really is worth the armful of cheap goodies.

You see, everything at Daiso - from gorgeous dishes to handy storage units to plush animals - is $2 Can. There’s so much good stuff that on my first visit, I kept asking clerks how much things cost. Everything really is only $2.

I can spend hours wandering the two floors. My favourite section is dishware where I’ve seen the same plates sell for substantially more at other stores.

It’s a great place to pick up gifts but also for things you didn’t know you needed. Cast-iron skillet? Gardening tools? Happy when you know it coin purse?

Daiso is located in the Aberdeen Centre shopping mall. For all intents and purposes, it’s considered an “Asian mall.” There are several clothing stores with styles imported from Japan and Hong Kong that – for better or worse - you won’t see anywhere else.

There’s also a great food court on the third floor with amazing Chinese, Thai, Japanese and Vietnamese food.

This visit, we were stuck between breakfast and lunch so we settled on trying a “frappé,” mainly because my aunt gave us a free coupon.

We ordered yogurt frappé with caramel. The woman behind the counter hauled out a big cylindrical white block and thrust it into a machine which then spit out shaved bits into a Styrofoam bowl. This was all topped with caramel sauce.

It was kind of like shaved ice but lighter in consistency, and tasted faintly of vanilla yogurt and chemicals.

After all the shopping and eating, make sure to visit Aberdeen’s lovely bathrooms. There’s just something about the colour palette and automated systems that I enjoy. The automatic tap always has warm water, and not freezing coldness. Oh, and they’re very clean.

The Daiso, Aberdeen Centre, 4151 Hazelbridge Way, Richmond, B.C., (604) 295-6601. Mall info here.